Tips for Better Long-Term Data Retention in Cloud – Aparavi

Safeguarding business data will always be a priority, and cloud and hybrid cloud environments offer a number of advantages for long-term data retention.

However, they also bring their own challenges, including management, complexity, cost, and more.

Environments that include cloud storage can benefit from the following tips from experts at Aparavi Software Corporation, a developer of long-term data retention SaaS platforms for multi-cloud architectures.

1. Pain Points
Drain on network bandwidth? Long migrations? Recovery times? Locked in to a sole service provider? Regulatory compliance? Most or all of the above? These are typical challenges with cloud backup/archive, each with its own long-term impact. Defining the specific problems of a current or proposed strategy will help identify the best technologies to solve them.

2. Platform
Traditional backup platforms still in use were designed decades ago for sequential access devices like tape, and later reengineered for HDD and then cloud as an afterthought. This flaw complicates how data is written to, stored, and retrieved from the backup target. Instead, a platform tailor-made for cloud storage offers native access, is easier to use and manage, and enables more flexible ‘future-proof’ deployment options such as multi-cloud.

3. Policies
All cloud data protection tools should operate automatically according to policies defined by administrators to eliminate the manual chores typical in conventional backup. In cloud and multi-cloud environments, policy-based control extends to sophisticated functions: switching to a more strategic or cost-effective cloud vendor based on the volume of data or its access patterns, or maintaining specific data only on local private resources, for example.

4. Pruning
Deduplication is a default, but newer data pruning technologies keep capacity usage in check by automatically removing files that are no longer needed, duplicate files, or files that should not be kept in the organization’s data stores. Because the costs of long-term cloud storage and archive grows as the data load grows, pruning reduces storage requirements over time and lowers recurring costs.

5. Price
Cloud pricing and the as-a-service model give organizations the ability to avoid large capital expenses in favor of monthly billing. Accordingly these modern architectures should not require a large up-front investment. In many cases the initial capacity can even be free, and/or the product free to try, so administrators can evaluate whether it meets the organization’s needs before incurring any cost.

Backup is still vital as the threats are more sophisticated, but the tactics have necessarily changed in a world where local and cloud storage combine, where data exists on multiple clouds and multiple providers. Following these steps – the ‘five Ps’ will help get cloud backup right.

Aparavi’s multi-tier and tenant SaaS platform was built to protect data both stored and aggregated on multiple clouds and on premises. Its certified devices and partners include AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Wasabi, IBM Bluemix, Scality, and Cloudian. It offers up to 1TB free in perpetuity, with subscription costs of $999 per year for 3TB.